I’m sure you have heard someone say this before “just be†– and phrases like “after all, we are human beings, not human doingsâ€. You may have even heard that from me!
The million dollar question however, is “Howâ€.
If “beingness†was so easy, wouldn’t everyone do it? Yes – and no.
If you think about a child, most children are in a state of being. They are being in the here and now; they aren’t thinking about what they did yesterday and they are not aware of what they’ll be doing five minutes from now. Ultimately, we just need to model a child to figure out how to “beâ€.
It seems to me that people get addicted to unhappiness – dwelling on the unknown of the future or the known of the past. Worrying, fretting and dwelling.
Lets take a look at this “addiction†to unhappiness. Its just a pattern that gets stuck, and we find plenty of proof in life that our hypothesis about being unhappy is true. And then, round and round we go.
When a person is stuck on this merry-go-round, the first step to getting off is being able to see it. And, once you see it, then the ride can stop. It doesn’t automatically mean that it will stop, but you have a much better chance.
You can stop the ride by being aware of your thoughts and feelings at any given point in time. Because when you are aware, you can make a choice. Without awareness you can’t. It really is that easy.
Lets talk about the past for a moment.
You can’t change it, you can’t remove it, you can’t delete it. You also don’t have to live there. The past is gone. As author Augusten Burroughs has said “The past does not haunt us. We haunt the past.†How true is this. When we allow our mind to focus in the direction of the past, we cannot be fully open to what is happening now.
If something happened to you in the past, it happened. You might not ever forget it, but you can live with it in the past. Yet, every time you think about it, you bring it back to the now. But, it doesn’t belong in the now. It belongs in memory land – in the past.
It’s in the past.
So what, you got a bad review at work last year, so what the guy you wanted to go out with didn’t feel the same, so what you made a fool of yourself at a school assembly when you were 15. It doesn’t matter. It’s not you. It’s not now.
What would it take for you to not give a shit that you didn’t have enough money for something last year, or that you forgot the punchline to a joke, or that the jeans you wore last week were too tight. Who cares – its in the past. What can you really do about any of those things now?
Ready for some steps? I’ve got ’em:
- Acknowledge that what is making you unhappy isn’t happening now. Its in the past, or in the future. Not now.
- Decide if this thought is helping you right this second.
- Choose to think about something that actually is happening right this second.
- Choose BEING.
I have a friend whose wife passed away a few years ago – for a while he was understandably very distraught. Finally, he realized himself that each wave of depression did not let him heal, it actually reopened the wound.
Once he realized this he made a very deliberate, very conscious and very brave decision. In the past, if he saw something she would have liked, smelled a perfume that she wore, heard a song she sang or saw something around the house that she loved he would be transported right back to the pain of losing her. Instead, me made a decision that as soon as he was aware of the thought of his wife, he would think of her in present terms “as if she were alive†and he would think of what her response to the smell, trinket or song would be. He would be present with a joy of knowing her so well that he could start to let her go.
Instead of going into a depressed and sad state he moved into a state of love and gratitude. This also helped him be present in the here and now and he was able to again enjoy things that he stopped enjoying when she died.
This ‘beingness’ isn’t always easy, but once you practice it, it gets easier and easier. So easy in fact that I child could do it.
Oh, wait! They do!